For years, the cry at the state Legislature has been, “We have to do something about tourism.”

At first, the rallying call was that the Legislature must help tourism. Waikiki hotels needed to be built, permits expedited and land rezoned.

Later, the Legislature decided what the tourism industry needed was to be taxed. A new tax was added onto the state’s excise tax. First it was for just the state, but the counties soon clamored for their own piece of the pie.

All the time, tourism grew, reaching 30,000 tourists a day coming ashore. And now the call to do something about tourism is to somehow tighten the spigot. Tourism may provide Hawaii with cash and jobs, but many now fear that tourism is not just calling the shots in Hawaii, it is becoming the soul and definition of Hawaii.

If the mayor of Maui can say “Enough!” then Hawaii’s problem with tourism is real.

“We don’t have the authority to say stop, but we are asking the powers-to-be to help us,” Mayor Michael Victorino said at a recent news conference.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority became the focus of the tourism angst this legislative session. The Legislature was not an HTA friend as it passed a bill to cut out tourist tax revenue for the counties and change HTA funding. Gov. David Ige vetoed the bill, saying it would “severely damage” the agency’s ability to pivot from marketing to destination management.

“Now more than ever, we need to strike a balance on a sustainable and respectful visitor industry and mitigating the impacts on our community,” Ige said last week.

Ige’s political confidant and Business, Economic Development and Tourism’s director, Mike McCartney, has been a longtime player on the HTA board, first as chairman and then HTA’s president.

Even so, Ige’s move to save the HTA with a veto lasted only a few hours, as the Legislature overrode the governor’s veto.

The new law did more than just slap around the HTA and fiddle with its funding, it expanded the county taxing power.

It used to be that if Oahu, Maui, Hawaii island and Kauai wanted more money, they were limited to raising the property tax or begging the Legislature. Now they can also raise the hotel room tax by up to 3%.

Said Maui Sen. Gil Keith-Agaran, the bill would “give the counties complete control over whatever revenue they want to raise through the TAT (transient accommodations tax) without having to query the state each year on how much TAT funding it will receive.”

As of press time, the county leaders are still puzzling out what they will do.

On the Big Island, West Hawaii Today reported the finance director as saying that if the county establishes a 3% TAT, it would more or less make up for the loss of the $19 million in revenue, adding that “this assessment is based on current tourism numbers at a time when the future of tourism is unpredictable.”

For the county leaders, this is becoming a growing time. If they want more money, no longer would they ask the Legislature for it — they will have to grow big enough feet to stand up and take it by raising their own taxes.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.